They said it would be like sleep, but without dreams. Just an endless dark void that would seem like an instant to me and allow me to skip through time itself.
They could not be more wrong...
Hell. That is where I am, or at least as close as I can tell.
You see, the human brain doesn't shut down, it stays active, even at a supercooled state, it just runs much slower, a not too fun side effect is that this makes time pass slower, or at least seem to pass slower for those in this hellish iceland.
I can hear them talking, except a conversation seems to take a year. From what I gather the project is going well, my vitals are normal and my brain activity is minimal, they think it is just random jitters and processes of my cerebral cortex, they don't realize I am fully awake. My brain slowly but surely processing every piece of information from my body. The frozen skin, neurons locked in an icy trap constantly feeding pain signals into the brain, crying out for warmth and relief.
Every inch of my body feels like it is on fire, like it is being flash frozen and then cooked over the heat of the sun itself at the same time.
It has felt like several years already, my mind slowly processing data, my wife has visited to whisper encouragements to me, although the doctors told her I cannot hear her. That conversation felt like a year itself.
Time is meaningless in this frozen wasteland that is my mind. It is odd, feeling insanity creep up. They say those who are mad cannot possibly know they are mad. I disagree with this assessment, I can clearly feel my mind begin to drift, begin to invent fantasy, conversation, hopefulness and begin to dream of warmth washing over my bones.
I am almost done! Well, that is what I heard from the doctor. My testing is almost done! It has been a century to me, laying in this coffin being kept alive and frozen, my brain slowly chugging along and keeping me from true rest.
I feel warmth coming through the needles in my arms, my body begins to respond and finally I feel something other than the smothering blistering cold that has clung to me. My brain recognizes the agony of warmth and neuron after neuron is subjected to the warmth of the liquid they are surrounding me in. While painful, I relish the feeling of warmth coming over me.
Finally I am able to open my eyes and move my limbs, twist my head a bit and see my wife, the love of my life... not aged a day.
"What is going on?" I inquired to the staff. Confusion flooded my brain, I must be hallucinating, I have to be hallucinating there is no other answer for what I see before me.
"We are waking you up after one hour of being flash frozen sir, as directed." a helpful doctor wearing a lab coat and holding a clipboard offered.
"An hour? Impossible!" I begin scrambling trying to get out of the hellish machine I am in, unfortunately my limbs are still not completely warmed up and rather than obey limply move as the muscles contract and try to order them to obey.
The doctor becomes pale at my reaction, "I assure you sir, you were only in cryo for an hour, you gave us strict instructions to wake you up at the 1 hour mark and take test prior to putting you under for a year."
I begin thrashing, trying desperately to get out of the machine, my mind, already fractured from spending a simple hour in the machine could not process the affect of an entire year. If one hour felt like a century, a year would feel like the entire course of history, locked and frozen in time, slowly going mad.
The doctor looked at me with understanding in his eyes, "Sir, if you remember, you did think that the first course of drugs would not work, hence why we woke you up in an hour, we can test another hour under a new set of drugs, as ordered by you." The doctor's hand motions and the orderlies move forward, gently pushing me into the tank and injecting me with more drugs.
"Dear god! Please! Don't do this, I can't possibly go through that again!"
"Sir, it will be okay, I promise."
"No......" I begin to feel slowly down yet again, my brain slowing and my body becoming colder and colder.
My consciousness became slower and slower, slower than before even. And just before I felt like I would go to blissful darkness, my brain stopped getting slower.
I tried hard to listen to those around me, but at the speed my brain was processing, I could not begin to make out words, they processed so slow.
My mind fractured, broken by the realization I would have to spend millenia frozen in time waiting for the ticking of a clock to release me.
In the back of my mind, the primordial part, I heard a whisper of a voice that did not belong to me, "Finally."
If you like my story feel free to check out my other posts on [my blog](www.agent20991.com/writing-prompts-from-reddit/).